This past weekend I had the pleasure of speaking with Dick Bourgeois-Doyle of Canus Humorous about the life and work of Joan Walker (née Suter), whose memoir Pardon My Parka received the 1954 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal.
You can listen to our conversation here at Soundcloud, or if you prefer, the transcript can be found through this link to Canus Humorous.
Thaddeus A. Browne had a decades-long career as an Ottawa civil servant, though his Citizen obituary (9 March 1935) makes more about his standing as a literary figure.
I'm not sure that Browne was a widely known as a writer of poems and prose; I'd never encountered his name before buying The White Plague and Other Poems (Toronto: William Briggs, 1909). Of its twenty-two poems, 'My Little Suffragette' is the second to take on soldiers in petticoats.
MY LITTLE SUFFRAGETTE
Little blue-eyed suffragette,
What for suffrage calling yet?
Stop your worry, cease your fret,
Don't you see the harm it brings?
If a vote were given you,
Many things no doubt you'd do,You might mould the world anewAs upon its course it swings.
But I want to tell you this,Winsome little suffrage miss,You are keeping me from blissBy your interest in such things.
You have worried my poor mind,You have been to me unkind;Good it is that Love is blind,Or he might have taken wings.
What! you did it just to tease!Little minx, give me a squeeze.Love you give me ecstasiesWhat's your choice of wedding rings?
Verse from Robert E. Swanson's Rhymes of a Lumberjack (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1943). The accompanying illustration is by Bert Bushell.
Not the sort of thing I expected from the publisher of "Poet Laureate of the Home" Edna Jaques.
THE TAME APES
Tame apes of the jungle they call us,
He-men of the forest are we;
Who spend our money on poker and booze,
And don't give a damn if we win or lose.
And a carefree life in the forest we choose,
On the slopes by the Western Sea.
We live a tough life when we're working,
We play just as rough in the town;
We're suckers for women who wear high heels,
With well-moulded bodies and looser ideals,
That trip down the street, dolled up in their seals;
Just waiting for us to come down.
We paint the town red when we're spending.
It's drinks on the house by the crock.
Then our friends are many, and women smile.
It's "What is your hurry? Please tarry a while."
But when she's all spent—we walk the last mile
Down to the Union dock.
Then it's "Give you an upper? The hell you say!
You bums can sleep on the floor!"
The world seems cold, and people will shun.
But a tame-ape brother won't see it undone—
He's still got a crock! ... the son of a gun!
So you step in his stateroom door.
"Say! ... Who's pushing' camp up at Kelley's?
They tell me you're running full slam.
Now the air is blue with cigarette smoke—
Someone is trying to tell you a joke;
You kinda forget you're going' broke
To the jungles: but who gives a damn?
So back to the jungles you're headin' once more—
To the brush where the tame-apes roam;
To the little old camp, by a railroad track,
Where the blue smoke curls from the bull cook's shack,
And the smell of the bunkhouse welcomes you back.
By Gawd! but you soon feel at home.
And before the dawn breaks in the morning,
From his bunk the tame-ape will roll.
While still it is dark, he heads for the brush;
When the push-ape hollers, he'll scramble and rush—
Get down on his knees, in the cold damp slush,
And scratch for his choker hole.
Soon the hooker will holler for the straw-line;
Then the apes in the brush don mad.
One runs with the end up the hill, sheer;
When he hollers out "Line!" you get in the clear,
And bound over logs and chunks like a deer;
If you're slow ... well, it's just too bad.
Then you think of the stake thhat you squandered.
And the plans that you conjured before;
So you make them again, in the very same way—
You'll head into town with your heard-earned pay;
But you know in your heart you'll be king for a day,
Then come back to the woods once more.
But life to a woodman is freedom,
Not measured in dollars sublime;
But to come and go and quit when he please,
Not beg for a job on bended knees.
No roadie to tycoons, with rich properties,
Who would see him in Hell—for a dime.
Over the boughs that the wind has shaken,Over the sands that are rippled with rain,Over the banks where the buds awakenCold cloud shadows are spreading again.All the musical world is still,When sharp and sudden, a sparrow calls,And down on the grass where the violets shiver,Through the spruce on the height of the hill,Down on the breadths of the shining riverThe faint snow falls.Last weak word of a lord that passes—Why should the burgeoning woods be mute?Spring is abroad in the spiring grassesLife is awake in the robin's flute.But high in the spruce a wind is wailing,And the birds in silence arise and go.Is it that winter is still too nearFor the heart of the world to cast out fear,When over the sky the rack comes sailingAnd suddenly falls the snow?
